The magic of the Spire portal swirled around him, familiar by now.
What was less familiar though was the sting of the air around him, especially when jumping between locations.
The Springlands and Low Meadows and the Revelwood had been pleasantly temperate. The Blackmire had been warm and humid and sticky. The Nomad Highlands had been hot and arid but grassy. And the Kindlewastes--...
Well, he can't say he was a fan of the oppressive heat and the sand that got everywhere. Somehow sand was even worse than dirt.
But even on the coldest nights, nowhere was as bad as the Albaneve Summits, he had learned straight away.
The rain didn't just soak his clothes, it stung like bees every time it fell with how cold it was. The mountain winds ripped right through his clothing as if it was hardly there. There wasn't a morning he woke up without shivering first thing even before he stepped outside.
And the ice? Deceptively hazardous, especially when stepped on. He couldn't say he was really a fan of that either.
So when he steps out onto the Albaneve Spire, the wind that hits his face makes him immediately scrunch his eyes shut. Even his eyeballs sting with how cold the air is, and getting warmer clothing is turning out to be a real chore.
But whatever. There were things that needed to be done, and a new territory to figure out, and where was little better way to get around or to get the lay of the land than from above.
With a running start, he flung himself off from the top of the tower, and spread the wings of his glider to catch the wind underneath.
Far below, he eyed the blue road of ice carving its way down the cliffs. Seeing the blue of it felt weird somehow -- but he couldn't quite place why, other than that it closely mimicked the blue hues of the Shroud below, yet Mori didn't seem terribly worried about it.
His whole body shuddered as the wind whipped all around him, but he ignored it and squinted at the surrounding landscape -- the dark grey granite and the patchwork of golden-brown and red and green plants. The weird white tops of some of the higher cliffs.
A small island of jagged hills jutted out in the dead center of the Shroud below, and somewhere he saw the square top of a tower just barely poking above the miasma.
Straight down, he could see long swaths of glowing red and black, the deadly red Shroud that had at one point been water, according to Mori. Some parts of it covered massive areas without any solid land to stand on, butting up against a huge black stone structure that had been put there by the Ancients long ago.
What that structure was exactly -- Chuuya had no idea, only that it nestled itself between two large cliffs, and atop each of those cliffs were more structures like a large house, or maybe a city, with no doors leading in.
On the other side of that black structure, the land dipped sharply into a ravine, filled with more red Shroud that had completely consumed the river that once ran from there into the Kindlewastes.
Granite cliffs turned to ones of grass, and then red stone and sandy valleys as far as the eye could see.
The warm air off the deserts below was far more pleasant and kept his wings aloft more easily than the cold, frigid winds of the mountains, the updrafts of wind and the downdrafts of cold clawing tug-of-war at his glider the entire way.
The Kindlewastes by comparison were gentle in their turbulence but harsh in beating sunlight, but he'd honestly take the scorching sun over freezing rain any day.
Below and off to the side, he could see Brittlebrush, and ahead, the massive rising spikes of what Mori kept calling fossils, and every time Chuuya shuddered a bit to think of anything that big ever existing.
The dragon he and Mori had fought was already plenty big, without it having a spine so long that it stretched across the range of a mountain.
Whatever the case, Chuuya did have a goal in mind. Directions towards where there was supposed to be some old clothes hidden away. No big deal. He'd get in, get it, and head home.
Goes out the window, that is.
In fairness to himself, in all the years since he and Mori awoke from the Cinder Vault, he's never had much reason to look anywhere other than down. The skies are always open and clear -- they practically belong to him and his dad.
So when one of those damnable dragon-bird things suddenly crashes down over him from above, the sun shining the wrong direction for him to catch its shadow before it hits him, his heart lurches into his throat the moment his glider lurches down--
It takes him several seconds to realize what actually happened, and by then, he's already careening from the sky, blood splatter falling like rain drops and unable to properly correct himself with the jagged tears that had been ripped through one wing of his glider, wind blowing right through it instead of catching under it.
He fights with it anyway, because there isn't any other choice but to at least try and control his fall, with a Vulture right on his tail screeching and taking swipes to try and either grab him or gore him -- he's not sure which.
He doesn't care. He just needs to land without dying, the wind howling through his ears louder than the screech of the bird in pursuit, and his descent plunges him straight into the thick of the Shroud.
The Vulture behind him screeches in fury and wheels away instead of following him in, giving up, but he's no safer for it. His crash landing with the ground hurts, and for a moment he blinks out of consciousness.
It must not have been for long, because even if his lungs burn, he's still alive enough to stir and slowly drag himself up from the dirt. Slowly ; painfully ; but alive.
For how much longer though, even he couldn't be sure. Even if he ran across nothing, the Shroud itself was a ticking clock, and he had no concept of time or how much of it he had left when he hadn't been awake for a portion of it.
Breathing hurt, moving hurt, but he didn't have the luxury of keeping still, and Mori...
Oh, there is most definitely a lecture for him in his future.
But first he has to make it back, looking up at the darkened sky that was getting darker still.
He took a deep, Shroud-filled breath and picked a direction to start limping, hoping that he has enough luck that nothing else wanting him dead finds him before he can make it to safety.
